Rob Hiaasen: How to professionally fantasize about football

In the off-season, Sundays have nothing better to do than to just laze around all day. But starting today, organized violent chunks of men and time return to give Sundays meaning and self-worth. Along with the usual hordes of NFL insiders, fantasy football is also back.

I’ve never played fantasy football, but I have football fantasies.

That the Chiefs will again beat the Vikings 23-7 as they did in the 1970 Super Bowl — a game my friend Paul and I still replay in our heads and in our emails. Then, he was a Vikings fan. Then, I was a Chiefs fan. The Chiefs won. I won. I was a winner. Let that never be forgotten.

That the Dolphins have a winning season. The odds of the Dolphins having a good year are mathematically equal to the odds of my 8-year-old Labrador finally learning to “come.” Not going to happen.

That the Patriots lose to the Ravens in the play-offs (it’s happened). If not the Ravens, then lose to any team — professional, high school, sandlot, Tudor electric football.

That I can watch an entire football game in its entirety. In my fanatical youth, I watched the Sunday 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. games without pause, then devoured “Monday Night Football.” Roughly 12 hours of football without blinking or napping. Now I’m lucky if I can hang in there for two quarters of any game. (For men of a certain age, have our passions sprung an irretrievable leak?)

That a female sportscaster be named a permanent play-by-play announcer for regular season NFL games. Lo and behold, this Monday ESPN broadcaster Beth Mowins plans to become the second woman to call play-by-play for a regular-season game. Mowins will call the Chargers-Broncos game in the second game of “Monday Night Football.” It’s not a permanent gig, but it’s a cool thing.

That I will conquer my unsociable and perhaps psychotic habit of watching football with the sound off. I like the violence of football, but I don’t like that I like it. So, I turn the sound down. Psychoanalytically, this is what they call avoidance. In layman’s terms, it’s called dumb.

That the NFL never plays on Thursday or in London again.

That the Chiefs change their name.

That overtime rules revert to the prehistoric days of sudden death. You score first, you win. Period. Don’t care if it’s a field goal, TD, home run or birdie. No 10-minute limit, either. You play until one team wins, no matter how many hours or concussions it takes.

That no game ever end in a tie (see above). Because, as Vince Lombardi said, tying is like kissing your sister. There’s no record of Vince Lombardi kissing his sister (he had two), but the surviving simile hasn’t lost its power to repulse.

That I turn the sound up at least for the second half of “Monday Night Football’s” double header so I can hear Beth Mowins do play-by-play.